Classroom+Wiki



**Title: Adding Details**

=Summary= February 2009

This lesson is designed for students who are in the Advanced and High Intermediate ESOL Levels. Most students do well in the Speaking, Listening, and Reading domains, but do not do as well in Writing. Their compositions are usually not very interesting and have too little information. The students are asked to write about an experience that they had when they were part of a winning team. Each student then shares his work with the rest of the class. To provide the students the opportunity to give feedback to their peers, a specific asking word was assigned to each learner. After reading a paragraph, the students start asking questions that will help their classmates add more details to their compositions.

=**Technology Standards**=
 * 1) Standard 2.0 - Digital Citizenship: Demonstrate an understanding of the history of technology and its impact on society and practice ethical, legal, and responsible use of technology to assure safety.
 * 2) Standard 3.0 - Technology for Learning and Collaboration: Use a variety of technologies for learning and collaboration

=**Description of Classroom Wiki**= Content area: (Integrating Writing in) Social Studies To introduce the writing topic, the teacher will show videos of people who have won in different events (sports, spelling bee). They will also watch a slide show on why adding details is important. Each student will write about the achievements that they've had when they were part of a team and will add more details to their compositions after receiving some feedback from their peers. The discussions in **Adding Details** (Please see Navigation) are the students' first drafts while the discussions in **Developing the Lesson** are the edited versions of their compositions based on questions asked by their peers.

=Reflections:= I am very fortunate to have such a hardworking group with me. I never hear them complain about anything that I ask them to do, which is unusual, I believe. But even with high motivation, even when no time was wasted on reminding students and repeating directions, it still took me several meetings to finish this one activity with them, which is not very practical for ESOL students. The best features of this activity are: 1) It enables students to interact with each other, therefore, giving them the opportunity for peer editing in this particular activity. 2) The teacher doesn't have to switch from one file to another, the presentations are appealing to different kinds of students--visual, auditory, kinesthetic, interpersonal, etc,. as the wiki allows the teacher to embed different forms of media. As with anything, the more familiar my students are with this technology, the less guidance and time will they need in the future.